


Story's End

by SharpestRose



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel. Buffy. Ice Rink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story's End

He'd had faith, once. A long time ago.

Things were so simple, once upon a time. (And a very good time it was..... 'Portrait of the artist as a young man' was always on the bookshelf, no matter where he lived. It made him feel safe). He'd been King of Existential Angst, but it had been a title undeserved, because the whole point of existential angst was that it came from trying to create your own purpose. He had one of those, and that meant that all the angst was really just self-pity, which is a lot less of a mojo to get the babes.

So he'd had his self-pity and also the self-satisfaction of knowing why he was alive (or not) at all, and his little gaggle of bright, brief friends, and his faith. He'd had Faith, too, his friend and sister in regret. Last seen disappearing off down the highway in some supernatural mockery of 'the Doom Generation', complete with two pretty friends to bum smokes off and grunt with in the heat of the night. He wished them well, although he knew it would fall apart in a month and a half. Werewolves and vengence demons were known for being solitary, and Faith was hardly monogamy girl either. Still, it was good that he'd never know for sure. They all deserved a happy ending, even if only in the confines of his mind.

That had been fifty years ago, when the self-pity had been burned away by real loss, and the self-satisfaction dulled by hard work and defeat. Faith had been the last of his companions to go, she'd been twenty-eight and somehow softened by time, rather then toughened. Calmer. She'd promised to keep an eye out for Wes and Cordy, he missed his quiet, scholarly friend and, well, life lost a lot of its color when Cordelia left. But they'd been right to go. Too many others, brave friends, worthy enemies, and innocent bystanders, had fallen in one terrible night. They deserved a chance to recover, and, like Faith, deserved a happy ending, even if only in his head. So all that Angel had been left with was his faith. That somehow, it would be all right in the end. That he'd fulfill his duty and be given a chance at a real life. He clung to that, his only bright spark in a life of pain and blood in the night, when the light was lacking and the red looked indigo. He needed to keep faith, to keep an almost obsessive devotion to one image, of walking in the sun, hand in hand with Buffy, the light playing off her hair in ways he'd only seen in dreams and imaginary moments that never happened. He needed that.

His hands trembled even thinking about it. As the years went by, he heard snatches of news from Sunnydale. Willow opening a bookstore. Giles marrying. Xander falling in with a group of chaos worshippers, commiting atrocities, and setting off to New York on his own redemptive quest. At the end of that saga a small smile had tugged at one corner of Angel's lips. Of that little group of teens he'd met so long ago, Xander was the last he would have pegged to become MiniAngel. Not that he saw Willow needing to find salvation, but...

And Buffy. Everyone expected her to die young, or grow old like anyone else (as if anything in her life would ever be normal... much to her despair, it never was). She was the first Slayer to live past twenty-five, Faith the second. Once, Angel had heard a rumour that a girl in Canada had been Called. He'd never wanted to hear more, because either way someone he cared about was gone, and that was not knowledge he wanted.

Of course, soon enough it was time for his yearly call to the Hellmouth, and Willow had left him with no uncertainty about it. He felt ashamed of how happy it made him to know Buffy was still alive. He'd said a prayer that night that Faith might find peace, and still kept a furtive little wish in the back of his head that the woman had suffered a near death experience akin to Buffy's one years ago. Perhaps it was true. He needed to believe it could be.

Buffy's wish for normalcy was never to come true. Her metabolism was not a human one, after all, and her aging process was not like that of her dear friends. At almost eighty years old, Angel had it on good authority that she didn't look a day over forty-five, and hadn't since she'd actually been that age.So, as years went by, he'd lost his faith. How could he keep it, when she was trapped in this terrible spider's web with him? They were going to be in a static image, a limbo, for God knew how many centuries. One of them would die, or the other, and that would be all. Or he would finish his modern-day Hercules act and have atoned. What then? Same old soap opera, with the dialogue reversed. He would spare her the pain of knowing you are preventing the person you love most from ever having a normal life.

~

And now he is here, in a huge bulky coat because he got chills so easily now, his immune system that of a newborn's. His breath (breath! how long he had daydreamed of something taken so for granted) misting out and sharing the air with the tinny pop music playing in the rink.

He knows how to skate, always had. Never had to learn, with balance and grace of a predator. The skill had lingered when the predator was banished. He moves through the small crowd of teens doing fancy tricks and over to the little girl grabbing at the low wall bordering the skating area, the blades on her feet skittering under her.

"Come on Tina, you can do it, I know you can." she is urged by the woman in the light purple turtleneck and black pants. Sleek, stylish, a beauty who never let herself go.

"No I cant!" the girl wails, then notices him and quietens. The woman turns and her mouth drops open like someone a third the age she looks.

"Angel." she says quietly. He nods. The girl looks back and forth between them, then begins to pull herself along the guardrail.

"I'm gonna go get a soda." she says, not waiting for a reply. Buffy doesn't look as if she heard anyway.

"She's pretty." Angel ventures after a moment. A small smile appears on Buffy's mouth and she nods.

"Yes. I never thought I'd be somebody's great-grandmother. Granny Buffy." "No chance of the big bad wolf eating you, though. You'd kick its ass." "Yeah." that makes her smile widen a little. Then it fades again. "It's been so long."

"I know." Angel doesn't think there is anything else he can say. "Skate with me?" he offers her his arm. After the longest second of their lives, she accepts and they begin to move together.

"Oh, not that way." Buffy cautions him, gesturing to the empty patch in front of them. "The ice is too thin."

"We can do it." Angel assures her.

And somehow, they do.

 


End file.
